The richest 85 people in the world now have equal wealth to that of the bottom 3.5 billion. Seems fair. What got me thinking, though, was how religious conservatives tend to be the most comfortable with this. They say things like, Well, if they’re creating the value… Sure, and by that rationale we can keep going. Why shouldn’t…

When debating someone who believes in the fundamental components of the Christian narrative, i.e. the choice by man to eat the apple, the fall, original sin, and the subsequent return to God, I choose to focus not on the specifics but rather on the first and most important events. These are the creation of man, and man’s choice…

Conservative Christians in the U.S. have a serious bit of cognitive dissonance on their hands when it comes to the Jews. On one side they support them emphatically because they are supposedly God’s chosen people. Yet at the same time they’re compelled to believe every single one of them is going to hell because they don’t accept Jesus.…

In the beginning there was nothing — just God. Before the book of Genesis there were no humans and therefore no human suffering. In fact there was no suffering whatsoever since God Himself was the only thing in existence, and He is perfect. So in a pristine world completely devoid of pain God decided to create a life…

If you live in America, you probably live within a few blocks of at least one Satanist. In fact, they’re around you all day, every day. Many of them probably go to church on Sunday, and some even have those cute little Jesus bumper stickers. But don’t be fooled — most of them are not really Christians. Satanism…

A new friend and I had an extraordinarily productive and meaningful discussion about religion last night. This is noteworthy because he is a devout Mormon while I am an atheist. What impressed me most was the fact that everything was handled from the foundation of science and logic (he’s a PhD candidate in Computer Science). The debate was…

Within the context of this thread I’ve been having a conversation with a friend about whether atheism and agnosticism is a belief. First off, let’s synchronize. If one were to claim that nowhere, anywhere in the universe, is there anything that could be construed as a god, that would be a belief. So, yes, I would agree that…